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Topic: What do you consider a "destination" wedding? (Read 24138 times)

I think it's about perspective. My mother would consider a wedding in the city (20-25 miles away from her suburban home) to be a 'destination' wedding because she HATES driving into the city and who would want to go anywhere where there isn't free parking? I on the other hand didn't think it a 'destination' wedding when I drove three hours and stayed overnight for the wedding of a friend.

Our decision came down to: If the location is one that isn't the B&G's current or former home, especially if it's in a vacation-y destination.

I agree; although I would also consider it a destination wedding if the only people living in the area were the bride and groom and all the family and guests had to travel in.

DH and I were married in the town we are currently living in, which also happens to be a beach town. Our [11] guests (immediate family only) had to travel 200-1200 miles to get here. We didn't consider it a "destination" wedding though. To have the wedding in the area I grew up still would have involved travel (of 500-1200 miles) for half of our guests, to an area with no convenient airports, hotels, and/or wedding venues. To have the wedding in the area my husband grew up would have involved cross country travel for absolutely everyone. We were paying for the wedding ourselves, and it made the most sense to have it where we were/are located.

I wouldn't consider traveling to the couple's city or town to be a destination wedding. That's where the live.

A destination wedding, to me, is a wedding where everyone has to travel to a place that the Happy Couple do not live, have never lived and have no real connection to (for that last, having had a nice vacation there once = has no real connection to). It's having a wedding in a particular place because the place seems like a good place to have a wedding, not because there is any connection to the Happy Couple there.

So, the wedding I attended that was in the HC's town, but everyone except two members of the wedding party who also lived there had to travel--not a destination wedding.

The wedding where I flew 2/3 of the way across the US because the bride was being married in her home town--not a destination wedding.

The wedding where I drove for three hours and the HC got married in the chapel of the college they attended--not a destination wedding. Even though the groom's family had to fly in from the opposite coast. The HC lived only an hour and a half from the college, and in my area, you will probably drive 45 minutes to an hour from the ceremony to the reception site, just because of traffic. But what makes it not a destination wedding to me is the ties that the couple had with their old college--this wasn't a random choice of "Oh, that would be a pretty place to have a wedding!" but more of a decision to get married where they met and spent several years together.

The wedding a friend had in Vegas--destination wedding. The HC hadn't lived there, all family members lived on the East Coast, and the reason they picked Vegas was, "Because it will be fun!"

There was a thread here a long time ago about someone from I think Philadelphia who had her wedding at a restaurant on the Jersey shore. The restaurant was owned by a relative, and she had spent all her summers as a child vacationing on the Jersey shore. It's probably about a 3 hour drive. Her family was giving her grief over her "destination" wedding, when really, the area was like a second home to her, and her family was accustomed to vacationing there. She did have a strong connection to the place, and that makes it not a destination wedding to me.

Our decision came down to: If the location is one that isn't the B&G's current or former home, especially if it's in a vacation-y destination.

I agree; although I would also consider it a destination wedding if the only people living in the area were the bride and groom and all the family and guests had to travel in.

DH and I were married in the town we are currently living in, which also happens to be a beach town. Our [11] guests (immediate family only) had to travel 200-1200 miles to get here. We didn't consider it a "destination" wedding though. To have the wedding in the area I grew up still would have involved travel (of 500-1200 miles) for half of our guests, to an area with no convenient airports, hotels, and/or wedding venues. To have the wedding in the area my husband grew up would have involved cross country travel for absolutely everyone. We were paying for the wedding ourselves, and it made the most sense to have it where we were/are located.

I wouldn't consider traveling to the couple's city or town to be a destination wedding. That's where the live.

Maybe I'm splitting hairs but I would say this is an "out of town" wedding vs a "destination " wedding. I would even call a wedding location that was picked because it was in the middle of everyone homes but required travel a "out of town wedding" ie 400 miles away for everyone not 800 miles away for one family and in the hometown of the other.

However, if all of the guests are pretty far-flung and the HC don't have strong feelings about where they marry - then I wouldn't call a place like Las Vegas necessarily a "destination" wedding. Usually fairly cheap flights are available there from many cities in NA and guests wouldn't have to spend more than one or two nights - as opposed to an all-inclusive Caribbean resort for example. If most of her family is in Seattle and his is in Milwaukee, everyone would have to travel no matter what and Vegas might be a good "compromise".

I'd still call that a destination wedding; but it would be "a less-annoying destination wedding."

I only consider it a destination wedding when neither member of the couple has lived there in the past for a significant period of time or currently lives there. A friend of mine is planning on getting married in a Northern state where she is from and her family lives, while the groom lives in the South. Groom's brother is calling it a destination wedding and says he won't go. I don't really think you can win when the couple grew up 1500 miles apart.

The bolded.

My cousin lives in Texas, married a woman from Texas, got married in Texas. Yes, I would have had to fly and get a hotel room, but it was not a destination wedding.

Friend married a man from Ghana. He has lived here for years. Yes, family had to come from Ghana, but as it was where both halves of the HC lived, it was not a destination wedding.

Couple from my hometown decides to get married in Mountain Town about 6 hours away? Destination wedding.

A destination wedding occurs in a location where neither the bride nor groom nor their families live, or have significant and long-standing emotional history.

A resort-type location doesn't define a destination wedding alone. People grow up on Martha's Vineyard, live in Las Vegas, and have second homes on Jekyll Island. This also includes ancestral and relatives' homes, if there is a personal history with one member of the HC. Getting married on your Aunt's farm in the Green Hills of Vermont or on your DF's Grandfather's ranch in Texas Hill Country doesn't make it a destination wedding, as long as there are personal or family roots there..

OTOH, getting married in Mobay because it's your favorite vacation spot and that's where you decided to get married still makes it a destination wedding.

A destination wedding, to me, is a wedding where everyone has to travel to a place that the Happy Couple do not live, have never lived and have no real connection to (for that last, having had a nice vacation there once = has no real connection to). It's having a wedding in a particular place because the place seems like a good place to have a wedding, not because there is any connection to the Happy Couple there.

So, the wedding I attended that was in the HC's town, but everyone except two members of the wedding party who also lived there had to travel--not a destination wedding.

The wedding where I flew 2/3 of the way across the US because the bride was being married in her home town--not a destination wedding.

The wedding where I drove for three hours and the HC got married in the chapel of the college they attended--not a destination wedding. Even though the groom's family had to fly in from the opposite coast. The HC lived only an hour and a half from the college, and in my area, you will probably drive 45 minutes to an hour from the ceremony to the reception site, just because of traffic. But what makes it not a destination wedding to me is the ties that the couple had with their old college--this wasn't a random choice of "Oh, that would be a pretty place to have a wedding!" but more of a decision to get married where they met and spent several years together.

The wedding a friend had in Vegas--destination wedding. The HC hadn't lived there, all family members lived on the East Coast, and the reason they picked Vegas was, "Because it will be fun!"

There was a thread here a long time ago about someone from I think Philadelphia who had her wedding at a restaurant on the Jersey shore. The restaurant was owned by a relative, and she had spent all her summers as a child vacationing on the Jersey shore. It's probably about a 3 hour drive. Her family was giving her grief over her "destination" wedding, when really, the area was like a second home to her, and her family was accustomed to vacationing there. She did have a strong connection to the place, and that makes it not a destination wedding to me.

This totally falls in line with my criteria too.

Also, I tend to think of Destination Weddings as one where you are expected to "vacation" there. Even though many weddings might involve flights and overnight stays I wouldn't really call them Destination Weddings. But ones where there is the idea that you are also going to do other "fun" stuff while you are there, often organized with other wedding guests, really make it a Destination Wedding. (Note: I'm not including weddings where people, because they are flying there, decided to make it into a personal vacation.)

Logged

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

I have a question. Suppose you have a wedding location which, while technically near the majority of the guests, has barriers to entry that might cause a number of guests to decline based on the location alone (or to never be invited in the first place). Like getting married on a mountaintop after a hike, thus excluding mobility-challenged guests; or getting married at a resort that charges a large daypass fee for people not staying there. Or crossing a country border, which might be quite near, but of course generally requires advance planning and paperwork of some kind. Would that be considered a "destination" wedding?

In my mind, it kind of would, because the couple is giving the location of the wedding a disproportionately high priority in their planning. To my mind it's analogous to a couple insisting on getting married on a specific date, even if that date is inconvenient or strange for a lot of people. I don't mean to suggest the couple is rude either way--as long as they take the declines with good grace, or maybe they want to have a smaller wedding anyway so they only invited a limited number of people that they've cleared the date/location with.

To me a destination wedding is small--what is "small" can vary, but to me it means the couple is making the location the centerpiece, and consequently operating under the assumption that not nearly as many of their social circle will be able to attend, as would if they were having a wedding at a more usual (for their circle) location. As someone who, perhaps weirdly, does not like attending weddings, I feel like if someone says, "I'm having a destination wedding," that's a perfectly good reason for me not to attend (assuming I was even invited). I'm thinking, "Oh, that means they want it to be small, and considerable expense and travel will be required of me, and possibly a passport, and if I'm even invited it will just be a nominal thing and I can decline without causing hurt feelings." I would assume that anyone super-close to me, who felt it really important I attend the wedding, would have checked with me before planning the destination part; if I'm only hearing it after it's been set, I assume I'm in a lower tier of guests (which I am totally okay with, btw) and a decline based on that additional effort and expense is not a surprise.

To me, the keyword here is, well, "destination". That word is describing the wedding which means that the event, in addition to being a wedding, is all about the place where the wedding will be held.

So, for me, a destination wedding is one where the entire wedding party, family, guests, etc. will be traveling to a destination for the sake of being at that location for the wedding.

A coworker got married in Mexico, for example. He and his bride picked the location based entirely on the fact that they wanted to get married in an outdoor venue they picked out with a particular view, etc. It was all about the destination -- the amenities that the particular destination offered. They and everyone involved in the wedding flew down to Mexico for the express purpose of holding the wedding in this exact spot.

That, to me, is a destination wedding.

Aside from that type of event, no matter where the wedding is held, unless the bride & groom only invite people who happen to live in the same city they both live in and have the wedding in that city, somebody is going to have to travel if they want to attend.

Someone having to travel in order to attend does not make it a destination wedding.

I have a question. Suppose you have a wedding location which, while technically near the majority of the guests, has barriers to entry that might cause a number of guests to decline based on the location alone (or to never be invited in the first place). Like getting married on a mountaintop after a hike, thus excluding mobility-challenged guests; or getting married at a resort that charges a large daypass fee for people not staying there. Or crossing a country border, which might be quite near, but of course generally requires advance planning and paperwork of some kind. Would that be considered a "destination" wedding? snip

No, I wouldn't consider either to be a "destination" wedding but I would consider it to be putting location as a higher priority. But when planning any social event, the hosts are going to prioritize their desires over others. Whether it is a location, all vegan reception, or gaps between ceremony and reception are all decisions and couple can make and the guests can decide how they want to respond.

We have family in Brownsville, TX. Matamoros, Mexico is a 2 mile drive across a bridge. A cousin's fiance had always wanted to be married in a church in Matamoros that her grandparents had been married in. But after passport changes in 2009, she realized that a lot of guests might not have a passport even if they lived in Brownsville or the surrounding area and wouldn't be able to cross the border. But even if she had gone through with it, it wouldn't have been a "destination" wedding in my opinion. In this same family a few years earlier they had a wedding in South Padre at a beachside chapel. Brownsville to South Padre Island is about 30 to 45 min. Even though the wedding and reception were in a tourist location and having it at this location was very important to the couple, I still wouldn't classify it as a "destination" wedding.

I have a question. Suppose you have a wedding location which, while technically near the majority of the guests, has barriers to entry that might cause a number of guests to decline based on the location alone (or to never be invited in the first place). Like getting married on a mountaintop after a hike, thus excluding mobility-challenged guests; or getting married at a resort that charges a large daypass fee for people not staying there. Or crossing a country border, which might be quite near, but of course generally requires advance planning and paperwork of some kind. Would that be considered a "destination" wedding?

I wouldn't call those destination weddings so much as inconsiderate.

There's similarities, in that the Happy Couple need to be prepared to have only a few guests attend. But if the mountain or resort are near where they live, it's not a destination wedding.

My cousin and his then-fiance wanted to get married near the top of a mountain where they had their first date. His mother had to sit him down and explain that if he wanted his grandparents to attend the wedding, there really couldn't be an hour long hike up a steep trail.

They compromised by getting married on the mountain, but in a state park that everyone could drive to.

I agree with the majority. To me, it's a destination wedding if the place is chosen not because it is where the couple or their families or someone else close who is hosting live or have lived, but because they think it would be a beautiful or exciting place. I agree, a ship or resort area or a place you have to go for a week almost always will be, but there are others, too.

The distance some or even most of the guests have to travel has nothing to do with it. As others have noticed, at most weddings, there are some people who have to travel. My future son-in-law's family will travel from Israel to Ohio. Still not a destination wedding; it's the bride's hometown (and still our town, and we are the hosts).

As others have pointed out, there are weddings we wouldn't classify as "destination" that are still a little inconsiderate to guests (on the mountaintop at sunrise). And by the same token, not all destination weddings are inconsiderate or inhospitable; indeed, for some weddings, like where the HC have already been married before in BWWs and feel funny about doing it again, or where there is terrible family dysfunction that make a large wedding a very bad idea, a destination wedding can be the perfect thing.

Having read many strings on this subject, it seems to me that the destination weddings that put people off are those that seem to be making the statement, "We care more about an exotic venue than we do about having you with us." And then when people well-meaningly try to avoid pressuring people to spend a lot of money by saying, in effect, "No big deal if you can't come," that just hurts feelings even more.

So maybe -- not for etiquette classification purposes, but for individual decision-making -- the criteria for a "destination wedding" should include context.